Tuesday, 12 October 2010

FRIENDS & FRIENDSHIP

Who can one call a friend; I looked up the definition of a friend in my Encarta dictionary and choose the following from the results I got:

Somebody emotionally close: somebody who trusts and is fond of another

Acquaintance: somebody who thinks well of or is on good terms with somebody else

Ally: an ally, or somebody who is not an enemy

We use the term friend relatively depending on what we making reference to.

I use the term friend to refer to acquaintances and people I am close to but when I have to differentiate the relationship between my friends and I, I refer to my acquaintances and allies as friends, friends I trust and share stuff with as my close friends and then the tinier circle of lesser friends whom I’m really really close to and can tell virtually anything as my best friends

I also looked up the word friendship in my Encarta dictionary and choose the following from the results gotten:

Relationship between friends: a relationship between two or more people who are friends

Mutually friendly feelings: the mutual feelings of trust and affection and the behaviour that typify relationships between friends

Friendly relations: a relationship between people, organizations, or countries that is characterized by mutual assistance, approval and support

The form of friendship that exists between my close friends and I is the mutually friendly feelings as explained above and that which exists between my best friend and I is of a higher, more intimate level than with my close friends.

Lately I have been having discussions with myself ‘bout who my close friends really are : an incident happened that triggered this, I’d rather not go into details and although its been sorted out I still had the urge to blog ‘bout it.

I like to think of myself as an open-minded and easily approachable person, I try my best not to judge as I try to put myself in the position of the person involved and try to react in the best way I think i would like to be reacted to if in that situation. I have a lot of friends of different personalities and few close friends with varying personalities also and I still somehow manage to coordinate them and respond to their needs from me in terms on friendship individually while still taking into consideration their different personalities.

I have a big issue putting my trust in any person, myself included, as I have been disappointed by people that I put a high level of trust in, countless times and even I have disappointed myself on few occasions by not meeting up to some expectations I set for myself. It really hurts when people that matter to me disappoint me(its easier to forgive myself than others), so over the years I have built wall after wall of guard around myself to prevent getting hurt when I am disappointed. It’s probably not a good thing but it works for me.

I manage to put a lil trust in my close friends though, that’s why I find it easy to share my strengths, weaknesses, happiness, sadness, worries, hopes, dreams, aspirations, etc with them and I expect them to be able to do the same with me but when the they do not feel comfortable enough to share the above with me then I begin to wonder what is the point of us being friends, if u can’t share these things with me because you are worried things may not work out how you plan or for whatever reasons best known to the persons involved, my walls just crumble and it hurts real bad and I could make very drastic decisions at that point about the relationship we have. If I can trust you enough to share all these things with you without knowing what the outcome will be and you have to wait till it’s all in check before you can share yours with me it really says a lot about our relationship. It hurts even more when for instance it’s someone i consider a close friend that I have known for about 5years or more, shared a room, house, friends and experiences with and I find out you are going for your master’s from a friend from another state or that the masters has been in the pipeline from a someone I consider not as close as we are. Damn!! It hurts real bad. Or whether it’s the fact that I spoke to this person that I consider so close to me some days before the person travelled and made the travel seem so trivial like it was a break from work or something of that nature that I didn’t bother to stop by the house, just to find out later from a mutual friend that this close friend of mine has gone for her studies and will not be back in town till about 2months later. It made me think and come to the conclusion that although I considered this person my close friend, this person probably did not see me in the same manner.

Although I can be very free, naughty, talkative, spontaneous, and all the other words that are used to describe me, I am actually a very analytical person, if some people could take a peep into my brain, I’m 90% sure they would be surprised by what they would find in there. I think a lot, even when I am talking I am thinking and at night before I go to bed I think a lot about a variety of things from work, studies, friends, relationships, skin issues, exercising, food, family, cosmetics, money, shoes, clothes, fashion, birthday gifts, health, French, Hausa, music, movies, my body, marriage TV series, novels, internet, acquiring properties, my blogs, to the future, etc, not necessarily in that order though. So as aloof as I may seem sometimes I still think about my whole day detail after detail and fill my diary to include even the smallest amount of money or outing or experience I had during the day.

Anyway that’s off my mind now, I feel better and sadly another wall propped up by reflex to enhance my disappointment shields. I really wished it were not like this but that’s that.